Friday, May 10, 2013

If the continuous negotiation of the contemporaneity of the presented works constitutes in our days the necessary condition of any historic exhibition of a retrospective character, in the case of Dimitris Alithinos, one of the most important contemporary artists, it is his work itself that primarily imposes such an approach.

A work deeply political, which has as its departure point artistic practices of activism and defiance of the 70s, subsequently opening itself out to transcultural and transreligious explorations, in the times of the so-called globalization, it intersects with and co-formulates a presently open-ended artistic plan: the function of art as a mode of alternative political thought and action and the development of an interactive relationship of the artist with local and global communities

The political crosses the body, of the artist himself and of his idols, through suggestive historical testimonies of violence and fear, symbolic liberating actions in the public space, various religious experiences and synergies throughout the planet, ones which investigate, we might say, the boundaries between artistic narcissism and humility.

Ιn the heart of this political body, always the ritual.

Like the sacred encounter with the self and the world. Like the red ribbon which inscribes dancingly the sea, leaving behind the sunset in the gulf of Patras on the journey toward Italy. Like a silentConcealment in the tombs of the earth. Like a colorful cohabitation of all the gods and all the people.